EuroWest 2017 was wonderful and I enjoyed presenting both days. I think people assume you can’t create and give a presentation unless you are an expert in some area. I disagree. From my experience, the magic of doing a presentation is in the interaction you have with the audience. You create your presentation based on your experiences with the topic and any research you have done. You will learn new things about the topic from your interaction with those that attend your presentation. The goal is to get a discussion started. No one is expecting you to be an expert that knows everything about the subject.

My second presentation was about Märklin Magazin. I covered when it was first published, how the number of issues per year has varied over the years and included sections on associated products. There are HO scale Herpa trucks decorated with images from the covers of the magazine. Every year since 1990 Märklin has produced a Märklin Magazin car. In my presentation I showed pictures of the first car from 1990 and some of my favorite cars produced since then.

At this point, it was my turn to learn from the audience. One person pointed out that there was a Märklin Magazin car produced in 1986, which would make it the first car. I had not heard of this car. Several persons joined the discussion that followed. I learned that this car was not produced in large numbers and it isn’t clear if this was an official Märklin car or not, meaning that it may have been commissioned by a third party, not designed and produced by Märklin as part of their own product line. There are many examples of Märklin container cars, for example, where a small number of cars are produced for a specific customer with custom graphics where the design is supplied by the customer. Whether this type of car is an official Märklin car or not is debatable and this is the kind of thing that makes collecting compelling.

I went looking online to see what I could find about this 1986 car. Searching for ‘marklin magazin 1986’ resulted in some images of the car. Oddly, searching for ‘marklin magazin car 1986’ did not. In addition to the images I found various web postings discussing this car.

I checked my Kolls 2017 Spezial catalog which has a section titled Märklin Magazin-Modelle and the first entry in this section is 4481 86705, a car based on the 4481 container car. The Kolls entry says only 260 of these were produced. Looking at the Kolls entries for all the Märklin Magazin cars, I noticed that this first car is unique. This car was an ‘advertising giveaway’ while all the other cars, starting with the 1990 car, are described as ‘collector cars – sold’. At the same time, all the entries, including the 1986 car, state that the printing on the car was done by Märklin.

The question is, if you want to have a complete collection of Märklin Magazin cars, do you have to have the 1986 car? Was it an official Märklin product, or a giveaway for an event? For the 260 cars produced in 1986, was a box produced, a box that had graphics for this specific car, not just a generic image of the 4481 container car? I’m not taking sides. I don’t know if the 1986 car is required to complete the collection or not. I do know that this is one example of why collecting is interesting.